An unexplained spam

By Luther Martin — March 4, 2011

A very unusual spam managed to get past our filters recently. Here's what it said:

Dear Sir/Madam,

It gives me a great pleasure to invite you to the forth coming international seminar which the Global Watch Institution is exited to be hosting in January 24th to 29th 2011 at Webster hall New York City USA, and from January 31st to February 4th 2011 at Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall Madrid Spain.

The theme of the forth coming seminar are; Racism and Human Right. Delegates who are interested to make a paper presentation are advice to make a summary presentation on the above subject.

On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I request you to kindly extend yourcooperation by giving wide publicity to the aforesaid workshop bysharing this invitation among your staff, members or relatives for theiractive participation in the workshop.

Note: the G.W.I will be providing all delegates with to and fro Air ticket and also visa’s guidance for the seminar purpose. Looking forward for your cooperation and support for the success of the workshop.Registration is open now! Contact the organizing secretary Mrs. Angela C. Derick for more information.Email: secretary_gwi_event@globomail.comSee you in the Seminar.RegardsMiss Gloria Francisgloria_francis@globomail.com [note to TypePad people: please change your editor so that it doesn't keep adding the mailto URL to this after I take it out]

I can't quite figure out what this particular spammer wants. If they're trying to use this email to defraud people of money, they certainly need to work harder. Maybe they try to sucker you into paying some sort of charge to help process the "to and fro" air fare that they provide you, but I doubt that anyone would actually believe that this message is genuine. Maybe they're just trying to set a record for the least effective spam ever.

Might be for information gathering prior to a social engineering attack. Collect a few replies and out-of-office notifications, then look at email addresses, colleague names, phone numbers, etc to target the people or their computers.